This blog is written by a journalist based in Mumbai who writes about cities, the environment, developmental issues, the media, women and many other subjects.The title 'ulti khopdi' is a Hindi phrase referring to someone who likes to look at things from the other side.

Sunday, March 06, 2016

Beyond Kanhaiya Kumar

March 6, 2016

Something really unusual and encouraging has been happening in the
last days. Apart from JNU, which has been in ferment, young people in
many other parts of India seem to be waking up and speaking out as never
before.

I spent all day yesterday surrounded by enthusiastic, intense youngsters who hung on to every word
spoken by a range of speakers about secularism, communalism, democracy,
the media, and history. The meeting was organised by a small group who
call themselves the Mumbai Collective. I can't remember such an
electric atmosphere in this city in a long time. Keeping my fingers
firmly crossed that this is not a passing phase but part of a deeper
churning.

Kanhaiya
Kumar’s words, as he delivered his passionate speech in Jawaharlal Nehru
University hours after being released on bail following 23 days in custody, will continue
to reverberate in our ears for some time to come. “We want freedom in India, not from India,”
he said as he went on to define what he meant by that freedom, that
“azadi”.

Kumar left those who listened to him at the venue, and on television, speechless. He
probably left his detractors, who have called him “anti-national”,
sleepless. For what Kumar said on the
night of March 3, and what he represents, cannot be ignored anymore.

But
is this the story of only one exceptional person, a young man not just with
admirable oratorical skills but also commitment, perspective, passion, courage
and insight? Or does this represent an awakening among India’s students and
youth, a stirring that has been a long time coming?

Rise and spread

What
began in September 2014 in Jadavpur University in Kolkata in the form of a demand to
investigate an incident of sexual harassment, spread to the Film and Television
Institute of India in Pune in June 2015, when the students went on strike
against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan to head the institution.

Like
the “infection” the Delhi High Court judge who granted Kumar bail fears, it
then spread to the Hyderabad Central University in August 2015, culminating in
the tragic death of Rohith Vemula in January this year. And then on February 9,
JNU became “infected” as students demanded their right to protest and were
instead charged with sedition and being “anti-national”.

Since
the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar on February 12 on charges of sedition and the subsequent arrest of two
other JNU students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, students from many
more universities across India have come out in their support. This kind of
solidarity among students across universities has not been seen in recent
times.

These
protests could, of course, subside. The
majority of students might decide to get back to classes, and to worrying about
their careers. But the chances that this
“infection” will spread are greater because the JNU students and the Dalit
students from Hyderabad Central University have widened the ambit of their protests. It is not just freedom of expression that
they are demanding; they are equally passionate about freedom from caste. It is
this combination that must worry the current dispensation at the Centre, or at
least should worry them.

Past passion

You
would have to delve quite far into your memory to remember a time when Indian universities
were in ferment. But there was such a
time. If you were in any university or college in the 1960s or 1970s, student
politics was alive. There were passionate debates about the country’s future,
about injustice and about freedom. There were Gandhians, Socialists,
Communists, Maoists. I can’t remember
too many Sanghis in those days.

Whether
you were politically inclined or not, expressing your views on everything and
anything was the norm. And no one was afraid. There was no one telling you what
was allowed or not allowed. And there was certainly no one accusing anyone of
being “anti-national”, not even if you believed that “power came out of the
barrel of a gun”.

The
late 1960s and early 1970s saw the Naxalbari movement at one end, and
Jayprakash Narayan’s call for Total Revolution at the other. Both attracted
educated young people, including students who left their studies to go and work
in the villages. There were study circles and intense debates. Many young
people who followed JP dropped their surnames so as not to identify with any
caste. Despite opposition from parents, young people were giving up jobs,
education, comfortable homes to follow their convictions. They did not want to
wait, to be safe. They wanted to take risks.

For
the young people who were politicised in the early 1970s, the declaration of
Emergency by Indira Gandhi in 1975 was an inflexion point; it confirmed their
worst fears about the Indian state. When the Congress Party president DK
Barooah declared that “India was Indira and Indira was India”, the frame within
which rights, such as freedom of expression, could operate had been set. If you
were critical of Indira or her policies, you were against India, hence
anti-national. In today’s context, this
sounds creepily similar.

Lessons not learnt

Although
there have been other galvanising events that have drawn out young people since
the end of the Emergency in 1977 and today, I would argue that there has been
nothing that has been this widespread. The issue of communalism did bring young
people out on the streets after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 and the
Gujarat violence in 2002. But their
participation was not on the scale we have seen today.

Since
the 2014 election and the formation of the Narendra Modi government at the
Centre, the demand for “azadi”, in the way Kumar describes it, has been
spurred because the state now defines what we can say and cannot, what we can
do and cannot, what we can eat and cannot, what we can read and cannot. You
don’t have to be a student of JNU to understand that this is unacceptable. Young
people have always demanded the right to question, to rebel, to choose their
own paths. As Kanhaiya Kumar presciently pointed out, the more you push them
down, the stronger they will emerge.

This
is precisely what has been happening. Instead of recognising the legitimacy of
the demands being made by students on these different campuses, the government
has chosen the hammer of “sedition” and the “anti-national” label to knock them
down. In turn, it is now facing the ballooning rebellion of students, political
and apolitical, who instinctively react against arbitrariness and oppression.

Pertinent reminders

What
is particularly pertinent about the struggles of the students in JNU is that
they are going beyond demanding freedom of expression. By placing on the same
plate caste oppression, these youth have launched a campaign that has relevance
and should have resonance. Relevance because it is unacceptable that in 2016
caste should still be a factor that determines a person’s future in this
country. And resonance because in 2014,
as Kumar reminded us, 69% of the voters did not vote for Modi and the
Bharatiya Janata Party. There is a large constituency of people out there who
do not subscribe to identity politics and the divisiveness that is being
deliberately fuelled by this government.

Kumar has also reminded us that there is an India that lies beyond university
campuses and television studios. It
includes places like his village, where his mother is an anganwadi worker. He
is in JNU only because there is a system that accommodates people like him. In those places beyond the reach of the media,
what is “India”, what is “the nation”, who is a patriot and who an
“anti-national”? Does it really matter?

Listening
to Kumar’s passionate speech at JNU, I recalled an incident from 40 years ago. I was meeting students at a
village school in Panchgani, western Maharashtra. They were curious about Bombay. Some had
heard of it, many had not. They had no idea who was the prime minister of
India, or the president.

And
then I asked, “Which do you think is the biggest city in India?” In an instant, a little girl dressed in the
regulation uniform common in most village schools, with her hair neatly braided
into two plaits, raised her hand.
“Satara”, she said, with utmost confidence.

1 comment:

Is student awakening, good or bad for a country? Unleash on students at Tiananmen Square is a grim reminder of what students will beget if protests are violent. Students have to be students. Their minds should be shaped in school and college days to be attentive to the views of others, accept differences so that they may make an objective attempt to engage in constructive and supportive dialogue in a spirit of mutual tolerance and respect. The father of our nation, practiced ahimsa and won Independence for us. Non violence to the core is the best form of agitation one can conduct to win the hearts of others. It creates emotional support and puts the other party in a quandary. Do our students require a better example than the one set by Mr Gandhi. Along with Mr Kanhaiya Mumar, we see a number of students with a tendency to stick to their views and ready to fight. Beyond Kanhaiya Kumar, we do not see a single soul that can move emotions. India is still miles away from an awakening through students that can transform India through the valleys to the peaks.

My profile

Journalist, columnist, writer based in Mumbai. Author of "Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum" (Penguin, 2000). Worked with The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express and Himmat Weekly.
Other books include "Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues" edited with Ammu Joseph (published by Sage 1994/2006), "Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out" edited with Ammu Joesph (published by Kali for Women, 2003) and "Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters" (published by Zubaan, 2010).
Regular columns in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine and on The Hoot (www.thehoot.org).